Groublogpon – The Serious Blog of Groupon

Thanks to everyone for the feedback on our launch of Personalized Deals – we’re so excited it’s finally in the wild!

We’re receiving enough repeat questions to dictate the creation of an FAQ. We’ll add to this post as more shared questions surface.

What do I see if Groupon doesn’t have any personalization information about me?

There will continue to be a city-wide “spotlight” deal for when we know nothing about a subscriber. If we know a little personalization information, subscribers will see their personalized deal instead (we’ll also show them the city-wide spotlight deal if it’s different).

Will I be able to see all the deals running in my city?

Yes and no. There won’t always be a full catalog of deals, but if someone receives a different deal than you, they can share it and you can still buy. Plus, everybody will still always be able to see the deal designated as the “feature” for that city and we’ll highlight a number of additional interesting regional deals on the Groupon homepage. This is our way of trying to maintain the simple “yes/no” decision of one deal a day that’s made Groupon so popular while running deals that fit the interests of more customers. If we do a good job with our personalization targeting, we don’t anticipate customers “missing out” on deals they would have wanted but weren’t sent to them; we’re excited to hear what people think once they start receiving personalized deals, and as always, the site will evolve in the direction dictated by our customers.

I love Groupon because it helps me discover new businesses that I didn’t know I’d like. Will that go away with personalization?

Not at all – we realize that discovery is a core part of Groupon. Personalization on Groupon is mostly about removing the most egregiously offensive deals while continuing to provide your daily dose of serendipity. This also allows us to feature more businesses than before. You will start to see more deals in your email and on the homepage over time, which gives you exposure to even more new businesses.

I often buy Groupons as gifts – how will I do that now that I’ll only see deals that are personalized for me?

If we get personalization right, you’ll still see plenty of deals that will make great gifts, both as the one that we feature for you and also in the area where we show more great deals nearby on the side.

I’m a merchant – does this mean that less subscribers will see my deal?

No – in fact if we do our job right, more subscribers will see your deal. As we get better at sending people deals they care about every day, we think overall engagement will increase, growing the Groupon pie and benefiting all businesses.

The printing press. The steam engine. The personal computer. In the pantheon of revolutionary inventions, these once-impressive breakthroughs seem embarrassing in the wake of the most important, most momentous, and most important breakthrough ever broken through: Groupon Personalized Deals.

Launching today in six cities (Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle), Personalized Deals represent a fundamental change to the way that Groupon works. Instead of a single daily deal across an entire city, Groupon subscribers will begin seeing a different deal personalized to their likes, dislikes, whittling ability, and number of pole-dancing classes needed to reach the medically advised minimum. Login to Groupon and click “My Profile” to enter your preferences so we know enough to send you deals that match your tastes, and grant ourselves power of attorney.

Like a baby, Personalized Deals will start out dumb, but like a baby dipped in some sort of mutating ooze, Personalized Deals will get smarter quickly. As Groupon gets to know you better, we’ll target your inbox with scarily accurate deals and scarily accurate hand-drawings of you. Soon, you’ll look back at the Groupon of today like the outdated steam engine of savings it is.

For somewhat useful details, read our press release. For a lot more, read this post about why we decided to build this feature.

Edit:  we’ve added a Personalized Deals FAQ to answer some of the questions that are coming up a lot below.

Personalized Deals is the biggest thing we’ve done since we launched Groupon. While Groupon won’t look much different, sending different deals to different users transforms Groupon in four big ways.

1. Customers Get Relevance

Over the next several months as we bring more and more merchants into the Groupon family, you’ll start receiving deals tailored to your location, preferences and buying patterns. Unfortunately, “try it before you knock it” wasn’t a convincing response to our male customers complaining about mani-pedi deals.

2. Merchants Get Access

Groupon has become so popular with merchants that we can’t keep up with demand. Over 35,000 merchants are queued to be featured on Groupon, and with 97% of our merchants wanting to be featured again, that list is only going to get longer. As a response to unmet demand, Groupon has become one of the most prolifically copied websites in the history of the Internet, with over 500 worldwide Groupon knockoffs appearing in the last 12 months.

Now, by intelligently matching businesses to their most coveted users , we won’t have to turn merchants away – Personalized Deals lets us grant access to any business that meets our quality standards.

3. Merchants Can Throttle Volume

Groupon has forced some merchants to contend with an entirely new problem: what happens when you have too many customers? We’ve created otherworldly events like sushi places running out of rice, or twenty-somethings lining up around the block to see the ballet. We’ve actually had to develop formulas that help merchants plan capacity and limit their Groupons.

With Personalized Deals a merchant can run a deal to different segments of customers over several months, giving them the Groupon goodness without the risk of being overwhelmed by a horde of new customers.

4. We Can Move Away From City Centers

In a city like Chicago, 90% of our deals are in the 10 miles or so surrounding downtown – but millions of people live in the surrounding cities. Now we’re targeting deals by location, creating better deals for customers outside the city center and delivering a more relevant audience to suburban businesses.

We couldn’t be more excited about Personalized Deals. We think you’ll look back six months from now and wonder how you ever got by without it.

A few weeks ago when we launched a revamped version of our iPhone app, we got a ton of requests for an Android app. We are happy to announce that the Groupon Android app is now available for download in Android Market for phones running 1.6 and up.  You can buy deals, access your purchased Groupons and find the ones that are nearby.

You can also redeem deals from the app and view side deals by selecting the “More Deals” option in the deal page menu.

We are working on adding features such as the ability to browse Discussions forums and a widget to the app.  We would like to get your input- post your comments on what you want to see next.

A couple of months ago, we invited thousands of customers to try a beta project called Groupon Rewards. The idea is for you to earn G’s for exploring your city, and spend them on the coolest stuff in town. With your feedback, we’re taking this program to the next level…by introducing “levels”. Rather than bronze, silver, and gold, you will climb the prestigious ladder of “sandwich”, “falcon”, and “moon”. Every time you get a Groupon, you take one step closer to the next level.

Welcoming the Moon

We invited some customers to check out a beta version of “levels”, and were blown away by your progress. In just a couple of weeks, several customers have already reached “Moon”. We felt like we needed to call and personally congratulate each one of these pioneers. Just ask Barbara D. from Washington D.C. who was given a call at her desk by three Groupon employees:

Getting to the Next Level

In the coming days, we’ll automatically add all Groupon Rewards members to the “levels” program. We’ll also continue to invite more and more customers into Rewards in the coming months. In the meantime, ask your friends if they’ve “got G’s”. We’ll also be sending a few random invitations each day to people who use “#GrouponG” on Twitter.

When you’re close to the first level (“sandwich”) we’ll send you a personal note and let you know. Each level gives you access to new benefits, like private parties, G-oodies, bonus G’s, and other cool stuff.

G’s are in beta, so we hunger for your feedback. Send any questions or comments to the rewards team.

Groupon is for lovers, but this month’s contest winner is dedicated to all the single ladies! Maureen O. to be exact, who submitted this photo.

Maureen writes:

“After we got settled in the downstairs room of the boat with our wine and food, my friend Kevin got up to toast us as we had done this as sort of a birthday celebration for him. When he finished the toast, he brought his girlfriend up and PROPOSED! It was a shock to us all – he had this planned all along!”

Pop some bubbly because we’ve got something to celebrate: an engagement Groupon-style.

Because Maureen is a member of Groupon Rewards, she’s earned 10,000 G’s to unlock special local deals or anything else she can find on Groupon.com. Do you want to be next month’s winner? Submit a photo of you redeeming your Groupon to pictures@groupon.com. Don’t forget – the Groupon must be in the picture to be eligible! (Not a member of Rewards? No problem – we’ll give you good old-fashioned site credit.) We’ll announce the monthly winner here. Check out the rest of this month’s entries on our Flickr stream.

About a month ago we announced the acquisition of mob.ly, to super charge our efforts to make it really easy for you to buy Groupons and take them with you on any mobile phone.

Starting today you can download a revamped version of our iPhone app.  We have made it faster, eliminated the crashes that some of you have been reporting and setup a foundation that will allow us to add new features quickly.  Also by popular demand, you can now view side/nearby deals from the “More” button on the deal page and use your Groupons when offline.

We are working on adding tons of new features to the iPhone app- everything from the ability to purchase Groupon’s as gifts, to using your G’s and browsing discussion forums.  We would love your input- post your comments on what you would like to see.  For you non-iPhone users- we have some great stuff in the works- so stay tuned!

I recently read in a business book that the secret of great companies is not trying to please everyone – you’ll more likely end up pleasing no one. You’re better off perfecting the experience for a more narrow audience. Since we want to be THE BEST company, we are now implementing the Platonic ideal of that advice by introducing a new program that is perfect for exactly one person.

G-oodies (pronounced “Gah” – pause – “oodies”) is a new part of Groupon Rewards where every day, we mail a highly specific item to one lucky customer. It could be a cat tree, a tie and socks set, or all six seasons of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys – you never know.

Make no mistake – G-oodies aren’t just things our employees have laying around. Each G-oodie is hand-picked and ordered by our staff with the intent of addressing a very particular need and making someone really really happy.

Unfortunately, we haven’t received feedback from most G-oodie recipients, but we did receive this email from Candice T., the lucky winner of an autoharp:

• “Seriously?! What am I supposed to do with an autoharp? I mean if you had sent me something like flowers, tiramisu cheesecakes from The Chesecake Factory, or a boy named Ian, then perhaps, I could have figured out something to do with them. An autoharp? Seriously? Am I allowed to donate it?” – Groupon Rewards Member C.W. Tam

It’s true: the problem with mailing a random person something extremely specific is that not every match will be made in heaven.

But if only once in the next year we manage to give something to someone that is eerily tuned to their deepest desires, we’ll have done our job. For this very reason, I carried a 4 D Cell Maglite in my backpack for my entire junior year of high school. “Darn, I dropped my pencil under teacher’s desk! I’ll tell you Andrew, if only I had a flashlight.” “No problem!” “WOAH! HOW LUCKY I AM THAT YOU HAVE THAT!!!” (unfortunately this fantasy never came to fruition, but the dream helped me make it through that year.)

Go ahead and browse the complete list of G-oodies. And the next time you buy a Groupon, remember that it could mean a dental mouth guard is in your future.

Groupon is all about discovering cool things in your city. Now, we’re making it even easier to get your friends involved. Whenever you buy a Groupon, you’ll have the option to share that purchase on your Facebook wall and right on the Groupon deal page.

It’s easier than ever to show off your adventurous skydiving plans or organize a group outing to a hip new restaurant. Enable Facebook Connect then click the “share” box on the Groupon checkout page to show your friends what you’re up to.

If you want a surprise gift to remain a secret or just want to keep your bikini wax to yourself, that’s okay too — you can choose whether or not to share each individual purchase you make from Groupon. The things you choose to share will only be seen by your Facebook friends.

To connect to Facebook, look for the button. You can manage your Facebook connection and Groupon sharing preferences from your My Account page.